Return of Spring: Return of Persephone

Spring is blossoming all over the place in the Pacific Northwest and I am welcoming the new brilliance, the flowers exploding from soft earth, the luminescent green buds forming on previously stark trees. My heart feels like a tender sprout after navigating so many storms these past months. Clarity is arriving, at long last.
In ancient times, the spring equinox marks the time of the return of the goddess Persephone from the Underworld. Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the earth and, at the fall equinox, she descends downward into the Underworld to visit with the dead. In her absence, Demeter searches in vain for her daughter, and becomes consumed by grief, causing all of the earth to wither and die. The gods later intervene, bringing Persephone back up from the Underworld to reunite with her mother at spring time, thus the blossoming of the earth anew.
Grecian history marks the story of Perspehone's descent with an abduction or snatching and later a rape by Hades, Lord of the Underworld. His desire for the beautiful maiden Goddess drives him to pull Persephone down into his Underworld lair. While Persephone is in the Underworld, she eats the ancient fruit of the dead, the pomegranate. Curiously, this fruit is also a fruit of fertility and birth in many cultures, linking the two together.
In many traditions, the Goddess is connected to both birth and death, the power of woman being intimately woven with creating new life and tending to the dead in human lives, in the planting of seeds and the fallow of fields. Often portrayed in a triple goddess form, the transition of girl to woman to mother to crone is a powerful reminder to connect [...]

New Moon and Inanna: Facing the Dark Mother

The New Year has turned over, welcoming in 2014. The New Moon is a potent time to clear away the old and make room for what is coming in, fresh and vibrant for the year.
These last several months of my life have been especially life changing, as well as deeply challenging. My thirteen year long relationship came to an end as I faced the truths of my own growth and values around self-love, power and inner wisdom. After a huge amount of transformation, I was left behind to sort out the physical pieces of our relationship, to begin the beautiful embarkation on a new one and to face the sorrow of being so far from my daughter.
In the months that followed, I have since lost my main income from online work, my daughter is gone, thousands of miles away, I am moving around like a modern vagabond, caretaking other people’s homes. My computer began oozing green goo and I have lost friends, gotten rid of most of my belongings and begun the huge process of deconstructing what happened the last thirteen years of my life. I've learned so much from being broken and shared this here, on elephant journal.
As the adventure of 2013 unfolded, I felt increasingly like INANNA, the great goddess of Ancient Sumer who descends into the Underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal, the Dark Mother. Inanna speaks to me, and to so many other women who seek guidance when we move through the especially hard times in life.
Ancient myths act like a key to unlock our innermost feelings and the myth of Inanna works to uncover our deepest, darkest truths in the form of a classic tale of initiation. From my book, Fire of the Goddess “Initiation is a deep surrender; it is the courage to really give ourselves over to the universe, [...]

New Moon, New Year 2014

Welcoming in a New Year as the New Moon passes through the turning feels especially divine and auspicious. This past year has seen a great many changes both personally and collectively. Fire of the Goddess is ready to take our next leap into offering the tools and resources to ignite the flame of passion and change in our hearts as we ring in 2014.
This particular New Year, we witness a New Moon. In the ancient Goddess traditions which honor the divine feminine, the New Moon is a time to let go of the old, shedding our skins, burning up what no longer serves us to make way for the new.
The Fire of the Goddess is the active creative power that resides within the divine feminine. Fire is symbolic of spirit and light embodied and contains within its essence the power to transmute, transform, to burn away the old and make room for the new.
As I prepare to make ceremony and connect with my loving community on the Big Island of Hawaii, I also sit in remembrance of what it means to honor the fire, light and dance of the Fire of the Goddess. That by celebrating the divine feminine is the work of the Fire of the Goddess, to reclaim our right to view the feminine as sacred.
The New Year is also the time to gather with friends and family, to set intention and clarify once again what is most important to our hearts and life journeys. As we bring in 2014, we can each ask ourselves what is it the sacred fire that burns in our own hearts? What will we do this year to benefit others? It is my prayer that we [...]